A year in a garden of light

ANTHOTYPES

An anthotype is a photograph created using photosensitive material from plants. An emulsion is made from crushed flower petals or any other light sensitive plant, fruit or vegetable. Several coats of this emulsion are then applied to paper. When the paper is dry, a photographic transparency is placed on top of it and both are secured inside a contact printing frame (a simple clip frame will suffice) A coated sheet of paper is then dried, exposed to direct full sun-light until the image is bleached out.

“Development” time and quality of the resulting photograph is dependent on many factors: the light sensitivity of the plant matter used to make the emulsion. Anthotypes may take hours, days, weeks or months to “develop”.

The Anthotype process was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel. These images have an ethereal quality and indeed, they are but fleeting shadows as there is no known process by which to fix them. Exposure to sunlight will eventually bleach them away. To preserve them for as long as possible, it’s best to store them in a dark place and view them only by candle light.

Anthotypes: Explore The Darkroom In Your Garden And Make Photographs Using Plants (Malin Fabbri) available Amazon (printed book and Kindle format) and Lulu.com (printed book and PDF format)